


Fire Escape

by metal_eye



Category: One Direction (Band), TV Commercials
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - High School, Backstage, Boys Kissing, Gratuitous metaphors, High School, M/M, general language-wank, the Coke commercial made me do it, theatre geekdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 07:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3720283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metal_eye/pseuds/metal_eye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That Larry Coke commercial? Here's a little drabble about what happened afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire Escape

**Author's Note:**

> So that Louis & Harry lookalike commercial with "Clouds" (see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L15ifd7HqIw) made me get all weird and nostalgic for my own high school performance days. I spent so much time wandering around backstage and hanging out on the fire escape that it started to feel like my safe place. 
> 
> And of course it was a prime location for (other people, that is, not me) sneaking around to make out.
> 
> Oh, and I've been told that nobody in fandom likes to read fics from first or second person, so I apologize in advance, I guess.

 

 

You invite him up because well, what else could you do? With those curls right in front of you, craters curling into his cheeks like lemon peel on a dessert plate. Hard to ignore, though something sweet is waiting. You put it off in favor of school posterity, of course. You’ve planned this quite perfectly—or so you like to think.

Following a set of bows comes the state of non-audience as you shuffle backstage. No eyes on either of you. Slipping back behind the curtains, trying to hide between folds so as not to be seen—every theatre tech experience, multiplied. You should be used to it.

Yet somehow it’s different to face this consumer of one.

“That was great,” says the one. “Spot on. Fuckin’ perfect.”

You turn around, back to the wall, feeling your spine spike against the windowsill, searching for comfort (never there, really—in bone versus concrete and plaster, who wins?). Adjustment. Awkward shuffles. Still backstage, but nearly by the door outside, caught in that awful yellow half-light that only seems to happen in high schools.

Normally, strolling off stage is like taking a walk underground: relief settles in as the high of performing wears off. Your nerves settle, suddenly complacent. Sweat stills.

But he’s here, now, and how horrible (wonderful?) that Harry keeps your mind on that stage, performing. Mortified but buzzed with want, and vulnerable, yet handy in memory. (You’ve tried to memorize what to say. Language is yours: powerful, potent, perfect.)

“Thanks to you.” Ouch. Like Prufrock disturbing the universe, shaved from silence. “I mean—”

“Given a chance to help you? Please. Half this school wouldn’t know talent until it smacked them in the face. I just gave everyone a back hand.”

You’ve moved aside and down to the exit, now, cornering the corner of the stairs like stalwart right angles. But you’ve prepared yourself for skewed degrees and scalene reactions. In your mind, it’s been years of training. In reality it’s been a few minutes. “Harry,” you say.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want this to be weird, but.”

“Why would it be weird?” he says.

“Because of this.”

You kiss him, back against a backstage windowsill, feet scraping on the _Hair_ cast’s floor graffiti. It’s dark and cliché and you wish you had claim to something more poetic, until he turns you around and pushes his hips, and the (slightly fragile) door to the fire escape opens on a metal grating only built for fleeing. The stairs to the parking lot gape open like mines waiting for a cave-in, and as high as this platform is, it seems safer than taking those steps all the way down.

Or maybe it’s his mouth, cavernous and craving. You hesitate to pull back for fear it might send you crashing to the ground. When the door shuts behind you, it locks out the world.

Hesitation. Harry’s smiling. It’s been raining and the metal railing is wet, though water is more welcome on your back than the pain of concrete walls.

“Why the hell did it take you so long to do that?” he says, curls poised like pirouline cookies.

You shrug. It sends drops of rain hurtling down. "Waiting for the right time."


End file.
